Blair Butterworth, top political adviser, is dead

Blair Butterworth served, over a 36-year period, as a political consultant and strategist for Washington governors, helped topple a governor whose campaign he had managed, and worked for mayoral candidates and such causes as Washington’s “Death with Dignity” Initiative 1000 in 2008.

Butterworth has died of cancer after a lengthy illness. His death was disclosed Friday afternoon on the Facebook page of U.S. Rep. Denny Heck, who described his longtime friend as “a class act to the end.”

Butterworth was a tall, imposing, deep-voiced presence, a person who managed to act a bit self-important while poking fun at himself for acting a bit self-important. He could be strongly opinionated, but nobody was better at keeping confidences than Butterworth when he served as an adviser to Gov. Gary Locke.

“It has been said that a man dies twice, when he physically passes and when people stop talking about him: Blair Butterworth will never die,” said U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., whose campaigns Butterworth managed and masterminded.

Ron Erickson, convener of the Block Table, a monthly political lunch group in Seattle, said in an e-mail to friends, “Blair has been an iconic figure in the inside game of Democratic politics in our state: Blair and his robust personality will be strongly missed.”

Butterworth was a Princeton graduate, part of the original staff of the Peace Corps, and first came to Seattle as regional chief of the U.S. Economic Development Administration. He fell in love with the city, and settled permanently in the early 1970’s as head of the Health Policy Analysis Program at the University of Washington.

He was called upon to advise 1976 gubernatorial candidate Dixy Lee Ray and found himself in an afternoon-long argument with the feisty marine biologist. Butterworth ended up managing her campaign, in which Ray won the Democratic primary and general election on a shoestring budget.

Butterworth was famous for saying, “We thought she would be the best governor Washington ever had, or the worst, and we were right.”

He was back four years, managing the primary campaign of State Sen. (now Congressman) Jim McDermott against Gov. Ray. McDermott blew Dixy out of the water, winning by more than 80,000 votes only to lose in November to Republican John Spellman. Spellman, in 1980, was the last Republican to be elected governor of Washington.

Butterworth partnered with former Mike Lowry aide Tom Hujar in a consulting firm — wags nicknamed it “HujButt — and later was the principal at Blair Butterworth and Associates. He was a major backstage adviser when Locke was governor (1997-2005) while resisting temptation to take advantage of the fact that he had the governor’s ear.

Pepple recalled getting together for a beer with Butterworth last summer. Pepple was managing Rob McKenna’s campaign for Governor. “He’s a guy who could disagree without being disagreeable,” Pepple added. “He could put partisanship aside for the good of the state.” And, Pepple opined, Butterworth was not “a slash and burner.”

In recent years, Butterworth advised former Gov. Booth Gardner on Initiative 1000, the assisted suicide measure passed by Washington voters in 2008. He counseled the Initiative 502 campaign, which made Washington one of the first two states in America to legalize, tax and regulate the growth and sale of marijuana. He was on the board of the League of Education Voters.

Butterworth is survived by a wife and two sons, Parker and Chris. Parker Butterworth made his mark working in the most recent successful campaign of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber.